The Late Child (39 page)

“Mom, I'm going to sit with Sheba, she's never been on a trip before and she's scared,” Eddie said. “Iggy and I are going to stay with her all the way to Oklahoma so she won't be scared.”

“He has the sweetest impulses,” Laurie said, looking at Eddie fondly. She managed to ruffle his curls, as he was passing down the aisle toward Sheba and Otis.

“I wish he got to see his father more,” Harmony said. It was one of the sorrows of her life that Eddie, who deserved excellent fathering if any little boy ever did, had had no father to speak of. She tried never to mention his father to him—if she did he got a hopeful look in his eyes; she couldn't bear to see the hopeful look in Eddie's eyes because it meant that he was only going to be disappointed.

Harmony had been dreading the tunnel so much that G. agreed to leave Manhattan Island by way of the George Washington Bridge. Laurie worked it out with him. G. was respectful of Laurie and always did what she asked.

Harmony was glad they were going over a bridge rather than through a tunnel. It also meant that she got to have a peaceful look at New York City, as the bus made its way from downtown to uptown. As she looked out and saw all the people on the streets, old and young, fat and thin, blond and dark, rich and poor,
she had the sense that she was leaving New York before she had even arrived. It wasn't that New York hadn't been there, with all its noise and beauty, its buildings and taxicabs, it was that
she
hadn't been there. She had only brushed by the city; she hadn't been able to be there because events had removed her from herself—she had been a little like a ghost during her hours in New York. She thought that maybe someday, when Eddie was grown and she didn't have responsibilities, she could come back to New York and mingle with the people, as she had mingled with people in the casinos all her life. Just mingle, walk, have a cup of coffee here and a bagel there, chat a little, hear about people's problems, maybe mention a few of her own if she happened to sit by someone who had a friendly ear; it could be an old lady in a coffee shop, it could be a guy waiting for a bus—it could be anyone. She had the fantasy, as the bus was going up Sixth Avenue, that maybe she and Laurie Chalk would stay friends for the rest of their lives, so that someday she could come back; then the two of them could walk around New York together. Maybe on that visit she could connect with all the things she hadn't been able to connect with this time, because of her ghostly state.

“I'm getting a little excited,” Laurie said, with a smile. “Despite myself, I am. It's going to be an adventure, isn't it?”

“I hope it's a good adventure,” Harmony said. “I hope we don't go off in a canyon or something, like my trailer did.”

“I haven't heard about many canyons between here and Oklahoma,” Laurie said. “I wonder if we could stop and buy a map, at some point. I'm not sure G. understands where Oklahoma is.”

“Neddie will tell him, she's a homebody,” Harmony commented. “She's not going to go past it or anything.”

When Laurie smiled she was very appealing. It was easy for Harmony to see why Pepper had fallen in love; what wasn't so easy to see was why Pepper hadn't let the boys go and just had a life with Laurie. She knew, though, that Pepper's problems with boys weren't anything she should dwell on. They were about to go onto the George Washington Bridge—she wanted to take a last look at New York. When she was sixteen she had fully intended
to go to New York to seek her fortune; it was just an accident that she chose Las Vegas instead. The accident had occurred because Continental Trailways was giving a special discount on tickets to Las Vegas—undoubtedly the casinos had made some sort of deal with them, to encourage people to head that way. It had worked for Harmony, she didn't really have enough money for a ticket all the way to New York. Her plan had been to stop and work for a few months in some city like Chattanooga or Baltimore; in a few months she should be able to save enough to get a bus ticket on to New York. But the special rate at Trailways made it so much easier to get to Las Vegas that she got on that bus instead of the bus going east.

Now she was on a bus going west again, out of the city she had missed because Continental Trailways had offered special prices, all those years ago, before she even had a real boyfriend. Of course she had done well in Las Vegas; well professionally at least. She had no skills to speak of; she could type a little but she couldn't do shorthand; she had not been particularly employable, except as a showgirl. Fortunately being a showgirl didn't require any skill except good looks.

“We're crossing the Hudson,” Laurie said.

The George Washington Bridge was so large that you couldn't just look down off it, as you could most bridges. Harmony had to look far away to see water. Then they got off the bridge and sort of swung around into some other state; Harmony wasn't quite sure which state it might be, but she did look out the window at the great buildings of Manhattan one more time. For a moment she felt a keen regret—she felt she might have made a wrong choice, all those years ago; maybe if she had not been tempted by the cheap ticket and had come to New York she would have had a better life—it wasn't just herself she was thinking of, either; it was her children. New Yorkers all seemed so ambitious, maybe she could have developed ambitions too, if she had come there as a young woman. She might have managed to go to college, at least she could have taken Spanish classes or something—she had always meant to learn Spanish but she never had; once she had
done a show in Acapulco for two weeks, but still she had felt handicapped by not being able to talk to the Mexican people.

Mainly what Harmony felt, as she looked across the Hudson at the great city she had missed, was that if she hadn't missed it she might have done better by her children: Eddie might have a father who cared about him, and Pepper might not be dead. Gary was right when he said that most of the guys in Las Vegas were jerk-offs. It was a pessimistic view for sure, but there was a lot of truth in it. Harmony had always tried to be a nice woman, and yet she had never really even been able to find a man who cared enough about her to help her raise her children. Gary was the man who had helped her the most—by far the most, in fact—and Gary was gay. Probably the person who had meant the most to Pepper, her daughter, was the girl sitting beside her, Laurie, who was also gay; what that said to Harmony was that the fact that you slept with a member of the opposite sex didn't make you a helpful person necessarily.

Then Eddie came up the aisle of the bus and crawled up in her lap. He had a solemn look on his face.

“Sheba's sad, Mom,” he said. “She doesn't want to leave her friends. What are we going to do?”

“Well, you didn't want to leave your friends, either,” Harmony reminded him. “You were very sad about it, but you got over it in a few days.”

Eddie looked at her with his most solemn look, and shook his head.

“No, I
didn't
get over it,” he said. “I'm still sad. I wish I could be on the bus with Eli, going to my school.”

“I guess I was just hoping you were over it so I wouldn't have to feel guilty.”

“Well,” Eddie said, brightening a little, “you won't have to feel guilty if you'll let me see the President and Mrs. President.”

“That solves
your
problem, but what about Sheba's?” Laurie asked. “She doesn't really want to go to Oklahoma, does she?”

“No, she wants to get off the bus,” Eddie said. “Otis does too. They're afraid somebody will get their Dumpster if they leave.”

Harmony got up and went to the back of the bus, leaving Eddie with Laurie Chalk. Sheba was crying and Otis looked bleak. Harmony was remembering that Gary had almost been hit by a taxicab when he jumped out of the car. They were on a pretty big freeway—for sure she didn't want to take any chances of Sheba and Otis getting hit by cars.

“Honey, you don't have to go to Oklahoma,” Harmony said. “You don't have to go anywhere, if you don't want to. Eddie's going to miss you, but he'll get over it.”

“No, I won't,” Eddie said—he had followed her to the rear of the bus. “I'll never get over it, but I don't want Sheba to be sad. And I don't want Otis to lose the Dumpster.”

“Probably already gone,” Otis said. “Ten people probably living in it now.”

“Yeah, all of them your girlfriends—dumb sluts,” Sheba said. Even so she was holding Otis's hand.

“I don't want to leave Bright and I don't want to leave you, because you kind,” Sheba said, looking at Harmony sadly. “Nobody's been kind to me like you have, letting me stay in your room right off the bat. But me and Otis be like fish out of water, down in Oklahoma. They ain't gonna like two New Jersey niggers coming in on them. How we going to make a living down there?”

Eddie crawled up in Sheba's lap, and clung to her, sobbing.

“I hate to lose my friends,” he said. “I hate to lose Sheba, most of all.”

“Oh, Bright,” Sheba said, hugging him.

“We might not be able to find no Dumpster, in Oklahoma,” Otis said—obviously leaving the Dumpster had been a big step, for him.

Harmony felt overwhelmed. She gave up, and went back to sit with Laurie. Eddie's big thing was keeping people together, yet it was the one thing his own mother had never been able to manage. Despite her best intentions, she had never been able to keep even three people together for very long, much less a busload.

“I don't know what to do,” she said, to Laurie.

“Eddie got attached, and so did Sheba and Otis,” Laurie said.
“Maybe I can talk them into going at least as far as Washington—we could send them back on a bus.”

She went back to chat with Sheba and Otis, and when she did Sonny Le Song immediately sat down in her seat beside Harmony.

“That's Laurie's seat,” Harmony informed him immediately. Omar glared at him and Salah stood up and shook his fist.

“Oh, sit down, Salah,” Harmony said. “I'll make him move when Laurie comes back.”

Sonny Le Song got the look on his face that he always got when his feelings were close to the surface, but Harmony didn't care. She wasn't about to let him sit in Laurie's seat.

“I don't want to sit by you and I didn't invite you to Oklahoma, either,” she said. “And I don't care how close to the surface your feelings are.”

“Your sisters invited me,” Sonny said. “They took pity on me because I'm down on my luck. You used to take pity but I guess you ain't got a soft spot for old Sonny, anymore.”

Harmony didn't say anything—she knew him well enough to know that talk would only make him worse.

“Is it because I made a pass?” he asked. “I know it was bad timing, but I miss you so much I couldn't help it.”

Harmony kept silent—New York City was receding in the distance. She still felt her regret when she saw the tall buildings growing dim behind them.

“Remember when you used to come to the Chevron to hear me sing?” Sonny asked. “The guys at the gas station thought I was lucky, to have the prettiest showgirl in Las Vegas check out my gig.”

Why is this man talking to me, what does he think it will change? Harmony thought. She kept a close watch on his hands, while she maintained her silence.

“Harmony, I was missing you
that way
,” Sonny said. “That's what caused the bad timing.”

“Sonny, it wasn't the pass, it's that I have absolutely no interest in having you in my life right now,” Harmony said. She knew it would sound like total rejection, but she didn't care. He
shouldn't have been so quick to take Laurie's seat. Besides that, he had shown up outside Laurie's apartment—in her book it was stalking; she had had other old boyfriends stalk her on occasion and it was not something she could feel tolerant about in her present state.

Sonny looked at her as if he was about to cry, but this time she knew he wasn't about to cry; mainly what she saw in his look was belligerence; he didn't like it that she said what she said about not wanting him to be in her life anymore. The bottom line, in her view, was that Sonny Le Song was a jerk-off from Cleveland or Wyoming or somewhere and he wanted to be the one to decide whether he got to be in her life or not. How dare he poke his dick at her leg when her sisters and her son were both in the room, it would have been rude enough if nobody had been in the room.

“You never used to be so hard-hearted when you were younger,” Sonny commented—definitely she heard some belligerence in his voice. Probably Sonny was smart enough to realize that bursting into tears wasn't going to work, not with Harmony, not at the present moment, so he switched to the macho mode instead.

Harmony didn't respond to the hard-hearted comment—why should she? Saying goodbye to Sheba and Otis was going to be sad; she had no space in her to worry about whether Sonny Le Song thought she was hard-hearted. She knew he was just trying to make her feel guilty enough to sleep with him at some point; the first time they were alone or even if they weren't alone he would be shoving it against her leg again, or against whatever part of her he could reach.

Laurie came walking back up the aisle. When she saw Sonny in her seat she got an annoyed look on her face. She came on along the aisle and tapped Sonny on the shoulder.

“Can I help you?” he said, looking up at Laurie as if he had never seen her before.

“Yes, you can help me, you can give me back my seat, please,” Laurie said.

Sonny stood up and peered at the seat as if he were looking
for something, but he didn't move into the aisle so Laurie could sit down.

“I don't see no name on this seat,” he said, in a tone that was neither friendly nor polite. “It don't say reserved for dykes or nothing. Maybe you better sit somewhere else, honey.”